A MANSION IN KAMCHATKA.
In the northern part of America and Asia the dwellings of the aboriginals are constructed partly under ground. A hole is dug in the earth four or five feet deep, and a rude roof of poles and earth is placed over it. The Greenlanders and the Esquimaux generally enter their dwellings by a long passage-way, so low that one must creep on his hands and knees, and it is so narrow that a stranger cannot easily turn round in it. In Kamchatka the natives have a similar dwelling. Some tribes enter their houses at the side by a passage-way, somewhat like the entrance to an Esquimaux dwelling. Other tribes enter through the centre of the roof, going down through a hole which serves for a chimney.
GOING DOWN A CHIMNEY.
After an experience of both kinds of entrances, I greatly prefer the Esquimaux’. In North-eastern Siberia it was my fortune to be thrown among the Koraks, a people whose dwellings have only one place to serve as a door and chimney. The fire is directly beneath this hole. It is generally burning in winter with considerable briskness, and almost always has a pot of reindeer meat over it. When you accept the hospitality of a Korak, you descend into this hole by means of a pole with notches in its side, on which you must cling with feet and hands. A blast of hot, blinding smoke rises in your face, and, as you descend, it grows hotter and hotter. By the time you are within two feet of the bottom, you can scarcely breathe. When you think you are nearing the bottom, you must jump from the pole, and you are just as likely to jump into the fire as you are to jump from it. At my first experience I did not jump fairly into the fire, but so close to it that my feet came very near being singed.
Every Korak habitation supports a large number of dogs, which are used for draught purposes. The dogs are not admitted to the private quarters of the family, but are compelled to stay outside. They content themselves with hanging round the hole in the roof, and look down in the inside, sniffing the venison that is below. Occasionally they get to fighting near the hole, and one of them drops through. Sometimes he drops into the fire, and sometimes into the pot of meat, and makes a commotion. He yells a good deal in either case. If he has fallen into the fire, he is taken by the neck and swung up again through the chimney. If he falls into the stew-pot, he is taken out, howling all the while like a congress of chimpanzees, the broth is squeezed out of his shaggy hide, so that it shall not be lost, and then he is thrown up into the open air. The natives do not appear to have any pity for the dog, and the fact that he has been soused in the dinner pot does not in the least affect their appetites. They swallow the stewed venison with just the same relish as they would if it contained no dog’s hairs to thicken the mess and get between their teeth.
INCONVENIENCES OF ARCTIC NIGHTS.
In these northern regions the weather is exceedingly cold. On the coast of the Arctic Ocean, far inside the polar circle, the sun frequently forgets itself, and for days and weeks in summer behaves like a masculine chicken, and never sets. In winter it also forgets itself, and not only sets, but stays set for a longer time than the most respectable hen that was ever known. It would be inconvenient to publish a daily newspaper there, for the reason that some of the days are not more than fifteen minutes long, while others are three or four months. And the same is the case with the nights, which are sometimes stretched out to an inconvenient length. They would be jolly for courtships and for evening parties; but it would not be advisable, in the middle of one of the best of those nights, to sing “We won’t go home till morning,” and then fall to drinking hot punches and things every ten minutes, “till daylight doth appear.”
Those long nights are a great delusion to a man who thinks it will be capital sport to lie abed until late in the morning. If he goes to bed with a determination to make a night of it, he finds that he does not sleep straight through, but has to get up a good many times before morning to have his hair dressed, and to get on the outside of that edible conglomerate known as hash. If he should try to get through the night without eating or drinking, the probabilities are that he would furnish a job for a hyperborean undertaker in consequence of early starvation; but it would be equally inconvenient to attempt to stay out of bed all day, as a great many people insist upon doing in this part of the world. A nap would be necessary after breakfast and after dinner, at all events, and I shrewdly suspect that the most of us, if we lived there, would have many breakfasts and dinners between sunrise and sunset.
It would delight John B. Gough or Father Mathew to have an old toper go away up north in summer, and take only one drink a day; and if he took it in the shape of an appetizer before breakfast, it would give him a splendid appetite by the time he sat down to his toast and steak, provided the day was laid out for only one allowance of breakfast, dinner, and supper.
GAMOOT AT HOME.